Talk:1499: Arbitrage

I've never been into an "explain" page so early... is everyone on March Break today? Jarod997 (talk) 12:56, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

The comic seemed to be very late, today, for reasons unknown (but perhaps Randall's been on a weekend Pratchett-bender, in memoriam). All the usual "early-birds" may have had nothing to work with, and perhaps even given up for the day/morning/whatever. 141.101.98.63 14:20, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Is that a facepalm by Cueball? 108.162.254.151 14:04, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

It looks more like a "My God, what are you DOING?" reaction from Cueball.

I think this might be a reference to Ultra-Low-Latency trading, where arbitreurs with Direct Market Access build faster parallel networks between two market and use the difference in latency to arbitrage before the two markets can communicate. This practice, along with many others, use the financial markets to generate revenue without any real contribution to the economy.

It is true that must current arbitrageurs are computer programs doing ultra-high-frequency trading, but arbitrage as a concept is far from limited to that regime. Arbitrage is pretty much the sole way that markets communicate to maintain consistent prices. Vyzen (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)